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Reusable/Packing Lists

mosius says:

I've created a nifty little Google Spreadsheet to deal with the recurring projects (and packing list) problem. It uses the RTM email import feature, but simplifies it by letting your store your lists and RTM accounts (for those multi-account families) in a spreadsheet and then have the spreadsheet do all the formatting and emailing for you. (Yes it even takes care of the annoying 50 items per email limit!)

If you want to give it a try, check it out here. There's a Read Me that explains how you can just freely make a copy of it yourself to use as you want.

Matt, what happens if you accidentally send the same list twice (or modify the list, with some of the items in the list having been previously sent) to the same RTM List? Does RTM create duplicates of these items in the destination RTM List?

Posted 6 years ago

mosius says:

Yeah. It'll just make duplicates.

The idea of the spreadsheet isn't too complicated, it's just the coding and scripting that's might make it look complicated.

All it allows you do to is store reusable lists in spreadsheet format (the second tab). Then it generates an email for you that will send that list off to RTM to populate your to-do list.

The list you choose to send it to (on the first tab) just becomes the subject of the email that gets sent. And the person/RTMAccount you send it to is just the "to" in the email.

The advantage to using the spreadsheet is that it stores all those reusable lists for you (way convenient, in my humble opinion) and when you have really big reusable lists (bigger than 50, per the RTM spec right now) it will create multiple emails so that you don't bump up against the 50 items/email limit that RTM puts in place.

Let me know if that makes sense. And if does, then the answer to your question should be clear ... as follows: - Duplicates will be created because if you send it twice, you've sent two emails, so RTM will import all the items twice.

Posted 6 years ago

mosius says:

Also, if anybody has any comments, suggestions or questions on how the spread works or should work, please post them here and I'll see what I can do about making it work better and more intuitively.

Posted 6 years ago

joegtd says:

I hadn't thought of the spreadsheet in terms of its storage functionality. I used it as a one-time (once for each list, that is) method of quickly getting lists into RTM. Once in RTM, I'd just uncomplete items to reuse the list.

Posted 6 years ago

johnwin says:

Hey @moslus thanks for this script, unfortunately everything works apart from the fact that gmail does not sent the email! I authorised the sheet to use gmail but nothing happens. Thanks.

Posted 4 years ago

johnwin says:

Ignore the above ^

All working fine now I put in my 'import' email address instead of the 'task' email

Thanks for this great tool!

Posted 4 years ago

jelykins says:

Another vote for Tuesday. Fantastic, thanks!

Posted 4 years ago

raymond.bergmark says:

Didn't pay enough attention to this when it was originally posted, great idea, works perfectly right away. Well worth the Tip of the Week!

Posted 4 years ago

brett_mumaw says:

This is fantastic, and I got it to work when testing, but after editing I keep getting the error